1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a chemotherapeutic agent for cancer (hereinafter referred to as a “cancer chemotherapeutic agent”) and, more particularly, to a cancer chemotherapeutic agent employing a cholestanol derivative and an anti-cancer agent in combination.
2. Background Art
A variety of anti-cancer agents used in chemotherapy for cancer, which is one mode of cancer therapy, have hitherto been developed and classified based on structure, action mechanism, etc. However, the efficacy of such an anti-cancer agent employed as a single agent is unsatisfactory. Instead, multi-drug therapy employing a plurality of anti-cancer agents has been predominantly carried out in recent years from the viewpoint of suppressing adverse side effects, and the efficacy of multi-drug therapy has been recognized.
Under such circumstances, both of the development of new anti-cancer combination chemotherapy, which has fewer adverse side effect and higher efficacy than conventional chemotherapies, and the development of new chemotherapeutic agents for use in the chemotherapy are desired.
Meanwhile, a cholestanol derivative, in which a sugar chain such as GlcNAc-Gal-, GlcNAc-Gal-Glc-, Fuc-Gal-, Gal-Glc, Gal-, or GlcNAc- is bonding to cholestanol (the compound that the double bond in the B ring of the cholesterol is saturated), were previously found to have excellent anti-tumor activity. JP-A-2000-191685, JP-A-1999-60592, WO 2005/007172 (pamphlet), and WO 2007/026869 (pamphlet) disclose the effects of such cholestanol derivatives.
However, no cases have been reported in which the aforementioned cholestanol derivatives and another anti-cancer agent are employed in combination.